Four Men Crept Into My Childhood Room, So I Kept My Eyes Shut novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Stay

Bethany's POV

Nobody in the kitchen moved.

The coffee maker gurgled and finished.

Clint stood in front of me with his uniform pants half buttoned and his hand shaking in mine, and he had said the whole thing in front of the other three.

"I'm not done," he said. "I'm only first."

"Of course you are," Lyle said. "You always take the good lines."

"Lyle," Abel said.

"Fine." Lyle put down the cereal box. "Beth. I'll say it plain, since nobody else will. I'd like you to stay, and I'd like to stop pretending that I'm doing it for the farm."

"Eli?" I said.

Eli pushed his stack of charts aside.

"I would like you to stay," he said, "for every reason I'm going to be too embarrassed to say in a kitchen."

I looked at Abel.

He was holding the coffeepot, and he set it down very gently on the counter.

"I put your keys on a nail in the barn," he said. "The first night. I told you it was wrong."

"You did."

"I did it because I thought if I stood in the way for a week, you might change your mind."

His voice cracked on the last word.

I had not expected that.

I had seen him carry a calf over a fence and lift a tractor tire alone.

I had never once seen him afraid.

"You were all afraid," I said slowly.

"Yes," said Clint.

"Of me leaving."

"Every day since you walked in," Eli said. "If you were asleep, you were still here in the morning."

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